The present invention relates generally to sealing closures such as those associated with hangar doors and hatches onboard marine vessels.
Hatches and door openings on board ships sometimes require watertight sealage to meet high performance standards, as well as other design requirements such as non-flammability, corrosion, fuel and chemical resistances and prolonged impact resistance. Current closure sealing systems do not accommodate many of such closure sealing requirements.
Presently available advancements in the fabrication of superelastic metals, allow for manufacture of such metals directly into sheet form, with the required strength, dimensions and configurations for closure sealing applications. It is therefore an important object of the present invention to provide a closure sealing system utilizing the superelastic properties of such sheet metals for watertight sealing purposes or the like with improved high standards to meet a wide variety of current design requirements.
In accordance with the present invention, the composition of a shape memory sheet metal material is selected to provide superelastic properties for improved closure sealing purposes without externally imposed control. Such selected metal involves Nitinol alloying by undergoing thermo-mechanical treatments already known in the art resulting in load elongation characteristic accommodating the establishment of closure systems providing the desired sealage conditions such as watertightness onboard ships as well as to deal with other associated environmental hazards. Such closure systems involve positioning of the selected sheet metal by direct attachment onto the edge surfaces of rigid structural parts of a closure arrangement, as seal elements to be deformed by engagement in response to closure displacement.